Artists: Diana Blok & Marlo Broekmans

Vintage Gelatin Silverprint, size 21x28cm, signed verso by Diana Blok, dated March 24, 1982, stamped verso Photography Diana Blok & Marlo Broekmans, Eerste Sweelinckstraat 22, Amsterdam’.

Provenance: print originally purchased by Bert Hartkamp, and sold at auction Sotheby on November 11, 2002.

Literature: Invisible Forces, publisher Bert Bakker, 1983, page 67.

Diana Blok (1952, Uruguay) and Marlo Broekmans (1953, Holland) are self-taught in the art of photography. They are serving as models and picturemakers in their project ‘Invisible Forces’ in which they have explored their own personal world of experience, and discover through it the universality of myth. The self they portray is an authentic female self, rather than the female which has been conventionally defined by the male.

The unique photo series Invisible Forces was created between 1979 and 1982 from the collaboration between Diana and Marlo (who were both active in front of and behind the camera) and their girlfriend and model Bernadien Sternheim.

Blok & Broekmans gained international fame with this body of work, which was exhibited all over the world, including in Center Pompidou (Paris, 1981), Canon Photo Gallery (Paris, 1980 and Amsterdam, 1981), Galerie Het Pepertje (Belgium, 1982), Photo Museum (Auckland, New Zealand, 1982), Northlight Gallery (Arizone, USA, 1983) et al The entire series was published externally in the book ‘Invisible Forces’, published by Bert Bakker, 1983.